Chapter 6 – Chilled Beneath the Second Sun...
King Tiber's palace grew colder and colder. Counselor Wessex could not fit another glove upon his hands, could not wrap another scarf around his throat, nor place another coat upon his shoulders. The ice statue of the Fay's Kahl-Queen Aura burned a chill that spiraled out of their control. Eyes stung in the chill. Lips chapped. Fingers turned blue and were lost to the frost. Outside in the village, water froze and burst the tinker's pipes. Birds and beasts perished. Crops froze and snapped. It was the time of two sister suns, and yet such terrible cold maimed the land its frost touched.
King Tiber shivered upon his throne, while his subjects wrapped their crimson and orange robes more tightly around themselves.
"Whose turn is it now to rub that cloth over the ice queen?"
Those who remained in the courtroom looked away. They did not want to feel that statue's frost bite through that thin rag the tinker had left them. They wanted to do nothing more to increase the chill that crowded their palace.
"Perhaps we should let the statue be a little long," Counselor Troy pleaded with his king.
Counselor Wessex nodded. "Surely, the ice does not melt in this chill."
But King Tiber shook his head. "I fear that poison cloud in the center of all that ice far more than the clattering of teeth. Do you not see how it expands at the heart of that woman? Did you not hear of our ruin should it seep from that ice? I'll not jeopardize that danger. I'll not give the tinker and his foul Fay their revenge. Someone wipe that statue another time before I start cutting off hands!"
Thus another hand painfully rubbed that cloth across the ice. Though two suns blazed in the outer sky, their rays offered little warmth to that kingdom that turned so cold. The features of Kahl-Queen Aura were a little longer preserved. The statue's grace did not puddle before the king's feet, while that poisonous cloud continued to pulse at the statue's heart.
The tinker and the Fay were gone, and in their absence, the village that froze beneath a pair of burning suns could do nothing more but to curse their workshop's invention.